Unilever IT centre in jobs boost

CONSUMER goods company Unilever is to create more jobs at its new European information technology infrastructure headquarters in Flintshire, taking the total workforce at the site in Ewloe to more than 500.

CONSUMER goods company Unilever is to create more jobs at its new European information technology infrastructure headquarters in Flintshire, taking the total workforce at the site in Ewloe to more than 500.

The company has spent #5m setting up the Global Infrastructure Organisation-European Service centre in Gateway House on St David's Park to service the IT needs of 40,000 Unilever staff in 35 countries in Europe.

GIO-ES vice-president Lars Stork said 450 staff were already working at the centre - 280 of them new recruits taken on since October and 170 who had transferred from Unilever's operations at Port Sunlight, Wirral, and other European locations.

He said: "Our workforce will probably peak at between 500 and 525 in the first quarter of next year as we develop a harmonised and standard IT infrastructure that will allow us to rapidly implement new technologies across the entire European region."

He said that the company had wanted to scale-up its IT base in the region but the Port Sunlight site had been unable to accommodate the size of the development so it had been decided to locate just over the border in Wales.

It had previously been thought that the centre would create 450 jobs.

The IT centre joins four other world-class "hub centres" based in the US, Brazil, South Africa and Singapore to deliver all Unilever's IT services across the globe.

It is the largest of the five and will handle millions of e-mail messages a week.

Unilever UK chairman Richard Greenhalgh, opening the new Ewloe headquarters housed in converted former council offices, said: "Once Gateway House is running at full capacity, we expect it to earn some #100m a year in overseas revenues.

"These will come into the UK as a result of charges levied across the rest of Europe for services provided from here."

Unilever had worldwide sales of more than #28.8bn last year. The company has 250,000 employees throughout the world.